Photo by Michael Strickland
The much-ballyhooed (by some, including me) Volti (Ch)oral Argument took place last weekend, and here is a stereo view of it:
First, Mike Strickland (aka "SF Mike") reported from last week's rehearsal:
It was a fascinating 90 minutes of music [including rehearsal repeats as the work runs only 35 minutes], and though we only heard two out of the five moments, I was entranced. This is fiendishly difficult but accessible, exciting music. I still have a few earworms from the rehearsal two days later, unusual for new music. Ted Hearne has just been named S.F. Symphony's "New Voices Composer" for the next season, and it should be fun getting to know his music. He sounds like the real thing.
On Saturday, it was my turn, at the first performance, which was poorly attended but wonderfully performed. In the amazing acoustics of St. Mark’s Lutheran Church, the entire concert was a thrilling experience. It's a continuing mystery how 20 voices, under Robert Geary's direction, can produce such a rich symphonic sound. In this city of many thousands of music lovers, why would less than a hundred turn out for such a rare opportunity to hear examplary performances of new music?
Photo by Janos Gereben
New works by veteran composer Kirke Mechem are exhilarating: "We can sing that!" is a hilarious, virtuoso piece; his Winging Wildly cycle from 1997 is a delight. Melissa Dunphy's 2014 The Oath of Allegiance takes the text of what she and newly naturalized Americans recite, as this Australian-born composer did when she became a citizen.
And then came the headline event, Ted Hearne's Sound from the Bench. Two guitarists and a percussionist presiding over a heap of electronics provided a stunning orchestral accompaniment and some substantial interludes, the Volti chorus storming heavens — music that is fascinating, challenging, and demands repetition.
And yet, when it comes to the whole of the work, befuddlement took over from admiration. The text is a mix of the Supreme Court transcript for Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission, which upheld and fortified a 128-year-old decision (Santa Clara County v. Southern Pacific Railroad) construing the 14th Amendment to apply to corporations and so recognizing them as "persons."
The problem is not that the subject is complex (which it is), but Hearne's and librettist Jenna Osman's selection of disconnected and meaningless text from the bench, such as "Why don't you tell us," "is that a yes?", mixed in with equally puzzling phrases from other court decisions, a 1906 poem ("when you hear"), Osman's own "simple surgery," and so on.
One obvious explanation is that Hearne is presenting something just as nonsensical as he regards the court decision about corporate personhood, reflecting the dissonance between common sense and anthropomorphizing big business, but it's too obtuse and confusing. Still, the music is outstanding, and Citizens is an outrage.